Post navigation

Please mark your calendars for the next Earth Day at American River College!!

This year, we’ll be celebrating it on Wednesday, April 22 and the general theme will be on Alternative Fuel Choices with a number of other very diverse green businesses. We’ll be featuring ARC’s own Technical Education Department’s cutting edge work, the City of Sacramento with some of it’s compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles as well as Regional Transit with one of their CNG buses. SMUD will be showcasing their latest info & technology that is sure to shape the way emerald valley that Sacramento is shaping up to be. This, and much much more.

If you weren’t able to attend last year’s event, feel free to take a look at some photos Don Reid was able to capture for our ARC Sustainability Facebook photo gallery page. Be sure to click on the LIKE & SHARE buttons to help spread the word.

Share this:

I wanted to send out an update on our composting efforts here at American River College. After a little more than year of beginning this project, I am happy to report that yesterday Waste Management delivered bins to the Culinary Program in Fine & Applied Arts and to Aramark’s Cafeteria in the Student Center so that we can begin diverting pre- & post-consumer compostable material from our land fills as mandated by Assembly Bill 341.
This bill requires that institutions our size have a 75% diversion rate by 2020, and with your help by informing students and modeling this behavior we will be able to meet this goal. I was surprised to see what was acceptable for both our compost & recycle bins, which is why I made this signage up…

If you have any questions, or would like more information on these efforts, please feel free to hit the reply (to me) button and I’ll be happy to discuss it further.
As a reminder, Printing Services will be a collection point for all of your used light bulbs / batteries / printer or copier toner & ink jet cartridges so please don’t throw those into our land fill receptacles. In fact, through a partnership with T3 Office Recycling Solutions those spent cartridges earn us money to be able to purchase signage & (soon) more recycle bins for the campus.

Share this:

#ARCEarthDay
April 23, 2014 from 8:00 am – 3:00 pm

We are very excited to present this year’s Earth Day Celebration at American River College sponsored by the Center for Leadership & Development and The ARC Green Office Program!

American River College celebrates Earth Day 2014 on Wednesday, April 23, from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The college will offer a variety of activities throughout the day, including informational demonstrations, educational awareness, and guest organizations and partners. A highlight of the day will be a talk entitled “Climate Change Science Update, Earth Day 2014″ by internationally recognized author and teacher, Robert Christopherson. Dr. Christopherson will highlight the latest global climate change science, including the dramatic changes underway in the polar regions, with recent photos and observations from his September 2013 trip to the Arctic Ocean.

This event will be held in front of the Library / new Student Center, with an e-waste recycle drop off spot in the adjoining parking lot. We’ll have alternative fuel vehicles and a ton of vendors & organizations showcasing green options.

Save the date for this special event and feel free to click the JOIN / INVITE / LIKE / Share / re-Tweet (@SustainARC) buttons to help us get the word out.

How can you help you ask, well If you work at American River College, download your first Acorn from https://green.arc.losrios.edu/ to certify your office as a Green Office at ARC! If you’d like to volunteer, please let us know at ARCStudentLeadership@arc.losrios.edu.

You can also click the JOIN button on our Facebook page to stay updated. This event is sure to be remembered and those of us on the planning committee are very much looking forward to seeing you out there!

Article written by Cecilia Baldwin
Photography by Don ReidSACRAMENTO, Calif. – The nation’s first commercial anaerobic biodigester designed by a UC Davis professor is drawing local and global attention for uniting ecology with economy and promoting environmental stewardship.
Ruihong Zhang, a UC Davis professor of biological and agricultural engineering, has been working on the biodigester system for a decade with a pilot stage that began in 2006 on the UC Davis campus.

Zhang’s anaerobic digester technology uses natural microbes to break down organic waste and in the process generates biogas and other forms of renewable energy such as heat, electricity, natural gas, and fertilizer.

The biodigester was completed on a commercial scale in April 2012 after CleanWorld Partners obtained exclusive licensing of the technology from UC Davis and implemented the system at American River Packaging; establishing proof of concept for the Sacramento South Area Transfer Station biodigester construction.

California has three biodigesters; the UC Davis campus where it produces electricity for the university, a second at the American River Packaging in Natomas which produces its own electricity and a third location at the Sacramento South Area Transfer Station.

CleanWorld Partners were awarded the International Bioenergy Project of the Year Award on Dec. 5 and were among the 13 organizations that were recognized last Wednesday with the 2013 Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award (GEELA), the state’s highest environmental honor.

CleanWorld also received the “Energy Vision’s Leadership Award” for its renewable transportation fuel production and the “Game Changer of the Year Award” for job creation and economic growth efforts.

The Transfer Station’s biodigester is the largest of the three and processes an average of 25 tons a day of mixed corrugated and food waste product from the surrounding Sacramento area.

According to Katie Oliver, an environmental engineer for CleanWorld Partners, once the expansion is complete they expect to quadruple those numbers preventing 100 tons of food waste a day from going into local landfills resulting in fewer greenhouse gas emissions in Sacramento.

Organic waste is collected from local restaurants, supermarkets, hospitals, hotels and food processing companies to be converted into renewable energy; even big box companies like Costco, Campbell’s and Target use the facility to dispose and process their pre-consumer waste.

The station’s biodigester provides clean fuel to the adjacent CNG Fueling Station operated by Atlas Disposal; the fuel is then used to power waste disposal vehicles, school buses and other fleet vehicles.

CleanWorld was awarded $6 million for the biodigester’s expansion in June 2012 through the Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program Award that was created by Assembly Bill 118.

Once the system is upgraded, “the biodigester will produce 700,000 diesel gallons per year of renewable CNG and prevent the release of 18,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere,” said the CEO of CleanWorld Partners, Michele Wong in a press release.

The station also “produces 8 million gallons a year of organic soils and fertilizer products for Sacramento area farms and agriculture and generates a million kilowatts of electricity to be used to power the facility and the adjacent Fueling Station,” said Michele.

“The fueling station produces the only commercially available fuel that has negative carbon intensity in the US, meaning it destroys more carbon than it creates,” said Katie.

According to Katie, the City of Sacramento is saving $1 million a year by switching from diesel to the biodigester’s transportation quality methane fuel and the remaining solid waste from the system is separated out and shipped to Davis where it becomes fertilizer sold under the brand name Ecoscraps.

Share this:

January 14, 2014 UPDATE: We are still working toward a start date and have most of the pieces in place. The biodigester tour brought us all back to the table and the final details are being worked out. Look for more information to come soon!!

I’m happy to report that American River College will begin pre- and post-consumer composting in the Student Center Food Court with plans to begin over in our Fine & Applied Art’s Hospitality Management program as well! It’s our hope that this new service will be up and running during this coming semester.

In preparation for this step, Aramark has moved into their new building and left all the Styrofoam containers in the Portable Village. What this means is that just about everything that comes out of there can either be recycled or composted. This effort will go a long way in helping us meet the regulations mandated by California Assembly Bill 341 which requires us to have a 75% diversion from land fills by 2020.

WE NEED YOU!

Attached you will find signage that will be going up. During the first week or so, we would like to have volunteers spend their lunch break helping students & staff to understand what can go into each of the bins—your help will go a long way in educating everyone of this important change. If you are interested in spending your lunch hour answering questions about trash, please feel free to hit the REPLY button and let us know!

Recycle reminder

I’d also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that we currently recycle:

College Hour

Author and teacher Robert Christopherson highlights the latest global climate change science from the pages of his best-selling physical geography texts, including the dramatic changes underway in the Polar Regions. See recent photos and observations from expeditions with Christopherson and his nature-photographer wife, Bobbe, who have completed twelve trips to the Arctic and Antarctic regions 2003.

The scientific consensus on human-caused climate change, the latest information from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific reports—weather anomalies and increasing tornadoes and hurricane intensity, ocean freshening and ocean acidification, the relation of climate change and record western wildfires, losses to the Colorado River, the Greenland and Antarctic meltdowns, the 2012 record-low sea-ice extent in the Arctic, and the latest 2013 data on atmospheric carbon dioxide (and more!) highlight his illustrated talk.

Recent posts

Meta

GREEN TIP

Bottled Water is not safer...
The federal government requires far more rigorous and frequent safety testing of municipal drinking water than bottled water.
For more info see www.foodandwaterwatch.org

SPECIAL THANKS…

Our Green Office Program is based on the fine efforts from the Harvard Office of Sustainability and used with their permission. For more information on their efforts, please see their website: http://green.harvard.edu.